532: How guided relaxations can help you go to sleep
For sleep awareness week, we’re sharing a conversation about the power of guided relaxations for a good night’s sleep. We’ll walk through several different options to help you find the best choice for you.
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Notes from this week’s episode:
Why guided meditation helps sleep
Guided meditation helps improve the quality of our sleep by settling the mind. Being led through a guided practice helps draw the mind away from anxious thoughts and engage it in a restful practice, where it’s turbulence is calmed.
The challenge with trying to sleep with an anxious mind is that the mind catches our attention and then runs with it. One anxious thoughts leads to another or escalates until we can’t sleep because we’re in a heightened anxious state. At such times, many will turn to their phone or the TV for escape, but those choices don’t support sleep.
Guided meditations can also divert the mind, but do it in a progressively relaxing way that helps the mind settle enough for sleep to come naturally.
Different types of sleep meditation
Guided meditations are helpful for settling into peaceful sleep. There are many different types of meditation for sleep. Some work with the breath, or body, others more with releasing unwanted thoughts and relaxing the mind through visualization. If you want to try guided meditations for improving your sleep it can be helpful to try different types and see which you prefer.
Using the body to relax the mind for sleep
The Body Scan meditation is a guided practice that redirects the mind away from racing or anxious thoughts towards different areas of the body. The body scan brings awareness to tension and temperature and other sensations and works through the whole body releasing tension and increasing relaxation.
Guided breathing practices
When we are anxious, we tend towards shallow breathing which holds the body in a stress response that can affect our sleep. Following a relaxing breathing practice helps us switch over to the relaxation response. Guided practices can help calm and deepen the breath and also relax the mind and calm racing thoughts.
Guided visualization
Some meditations create a peaceful journey with supporting music to help immerse the mind in a relaxing experience similar to hypnosis.
Thought calming meditation
Sometimes our sleep is disturbed by worrying thoughts that catch the mind in a stressed and wakeful state. Some meditations encourage the release of anxious thoughts by meditating on them drifting by or floating away.
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Guided relaxation for worry-free sleep - Journey to deep relaxation
Daytime Nap - and Music for sleep
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